Chapter 9
Arbiters Brief a demonic vision Merle A few notes supplemental to the summaries below. Millie recognized the symbol on the back of the book as a Christian demon-battling thing (a big fire demon that rampaged around Vancouver in 1886). The symbol is affiliated with The Watchers. After some persistent inquiries with the Church, we got connected with Father Bryce, who (unlike the more conservative Church officials we spoke with) may be willing to bless our weapons. The goal here is to equip ourselves against Gilgarax - as previously noted, we know demons have no weaknesses, can be killed only by special magical artifacts, can be trapped with a magic sigil, and can be driven off by damaging their bodies with holy water or blessed weapons. Merle acquired a bunch of holy water and intends to pick up water guns, water bottles and/or balloons at the first possible opportunity. We met with Professor Ingram who translated the book for us. It's Juan de Fuca's private journal of his second voyage. The Church funded the voyage not just to seek gold, but also to further explore an area he found on his first expedition which is a "mouth to hell". It appears to be somewhere underwater in what is now False Creek area (old description: dry creek with a cave, he rowed in and found ancient standing stones). A demon looked up at de Fuca through the portal. They escaped and the second voyage was aimed at sealing the portal, which they managed to do with the help of the Church and Watchers. Details on how they did so somewhat unclear. Professor Ingram and his charming wife will clearly lead long, happy lives. We wished them well and took our leave. 5 generic 1 military J-Dog So Library guy seems a little skeeved out, we should've worn our CSIS Disguises? Good thing I asked for the professor's name, I don't think he was going to call... These guys don't want to talk to him at work? OK, back to the Apprentice Training. Oh, so now Mason wants to talk! Get our ass in gear? You don't say. Nice Night for a bus ride. Good thing we changed into the disguises, the wife seems suspicious... Hell Mouths & Holy Orders, things just keep getting better and better. Lets talk to the Priest at the nunnery, maybe he can Bless our Weapons? No dice but maybe an Exorcist connection, that sounds super-promising. Time to get high? These guys keep surprising me. Demons. Demons everywhere. Well that explains a lot. And they called me crazy! Millie We picked things up at the library, where we met a language expert named Chen. Charlotte showed him some pictures of the book and he id’ed the language as an old spanish. He also said he could contact a Prof. Ingram who might know more and we gave him a number. He must have thought we were sketchy af cause we didn’t hear anything until Mason calls, yelling about the demons getting ahead of us. Alright cool, Agent Girlfriend back in action. The Cassa Grande is so fucking hot right now. Neils has seen us in it, we got spotted in at at the library, the Dante gang is prowling everywhere.... Shit, it’s my bloody home! Gotta figure out how to steal a car. Wait, why’s it so easy in gta? Oh right, that’s car jacking… hmmm. So we take the fucking bus like peasants to Ingram’s place and talk our way in. Bitch wife doesn’t want Charlotte and I to come in but J-Dawg can’t people and Merle is scary looking. We went to the study because “that’s where these things are revealed”. Ingram is a true scholar and he was eager to do a translation for us. The story is one of Juan de Fuca finding a massive demon gate on the westcoast in his first voyage, and then coming back with some old-timey church demon fuckers, he closed the gate. And the gate was in some cave near false creek. We grab the translation and bus our way back. As we leave, we see Neils’ driver watching for us. Oh shit, the Ingrams are so fucked. The best thing to help the guilt is an intense drug trip! Wait, isn’t there a reason I don’t do drugs? As I was puking my guts out, I remembered why I don’t do this. Holy shit, I don’t know where it all comes from. Somehow, the waves of nausea passed and our helpful drug guide pointed out the Lurker demon on the wall. She starts chatting about different demons feeding off of different emotions or whatever and how they attach themselves to people. For some reason we’re unusual cause we don’t have any demons. My Urdroog brand itches. We go outside and there’s demons everywhere, like more demons than people. Every colour and shape of demon is causing havoc. Even though I was high as fuck and my guts felt like I’d been used as a punching bag, I tried to play it cool. As we walked around gawking at demons, we saw this super scary car go by with red light coming out. Juno said they were arch demons and that was bad. Our protector, Martini, took charge and had us cut through a business into an alley that was full of demons… just packed like skytrain at rush hour. Martini starts telling us how the demons can make it harder for other demons to track us. Like demon stealth, is that a thing? We had back to the Cambie and I start crashing hard. I start ineptly gurgling for the Narcan when I heard Charlotte calling me back and I somehow make it back to consciousness. Tomorrow I need to get some tattoos that will boost my stamina, this is getting ridiculous! Charlotte Amor and Tattoos! Off the shelf Stab Vest FTW. I can almost even almost wear it properly! We also have an appointment at 1pm for the gang to get inked. I'm looking for an upgrade and a sweet new Pikachu or Princess Leia buns We made some progress on translating the golden book. A UBC professor translated the whole thing for us after we paid him a visit at his home. The gist of his translation is that the book is a journal of Juan De Fuca's second voyage - the one where he is paid by the Church to return to BC and seal a hellgate. From what we can tell, the hell gate is somewhere in the False Creek area. My money is that the Revenant and the trapdoor it protects are related somehow. Some more time with the translation to map its landmarks to modern-day Vancouver will probably help narrow things down. We also identified the symbol on the back as belonging to a brotherhood of knights - probably the Knights Hospitaler. Everything else sort of pales in comparison, though, to the incredibly mind-blowing revelation that we are surrounded by Demons. Demons everywhere. We finally got around to getting a dreamwalk tour from Juno. She and her friend were very professional - thankfully. We found a room at the Cambie hotel and drank some tea. We then went on a 'walk'. She showed us that Demons are attached like parasites to people and places. They drink strong emotions. We saw examples of them consuming anger, impatience, addiction, and some that just appeared to be happy watching shit happen. Those were all 'lesser' demons. In general, there is no physical interaction with them. They exist to leech our energy and we never know. Juno said that we were unusual because we did not have any demons attached to us - many do in the downtown east side. She also said she thought we were 'travelers' but i'm not sure if she was just expecting us to get up and walk around or if she meant something else. She also said that the grubs we fought in the sewer looked like physical manifestations of baby demons. Perhaps, they have found a way to be born into our physical realm. I wonder what the XRD knows about that? There was a really scary moment when I noticed a black car with red flames flowing from the windows. It was a fucking greater demon! Apparently, they are bad news and drive around town like they own the fucking place. We booked out of there and hid in a nasty alley where lots of bad shit has happened. It was full of demons - swarms of them. The greater demon lost us in the cloud of lesser demons - a good trick to remember for future. In summary, Vancouver - and other cities, too, according to Juno - are infested with demons. Whatever resources could clean them up are overwhelmed and resigned to the mess. There are no angels anywhere so the demons are left to run free. The greater demons are the ones we really need to worry about since they are the ones that interact with our physical reality. Lute and his henchman are both greater demons. Arch-demons are something else, much stronger and even scarier. Not sure how they play into our story yet. Category:Guardians